They say immigrants steal the hubcaps
  Of the respected gentlemen
  They say it would be wine an' roses
  If England were for Englishmen again
    Well I saw a dirty overcoat
  At the foot of the pillar of the road
  Propped inside was an old man
  Whom time would not erode
  When the night was snapped by sirens
  Those blue lights circled fast
  The dancehall called for an' ambulance
  The bars all closed up fast
    My silence gazing at the ceiling
  While roaming the single room
  I thought the old man could help me
  If he could explain the gloom
  You really think it's all new
  You really think about it too
  The old man scoffed as he spoke to me
  I'll tell you a thing or two
    I missed the fourteen-eighteen war
  But not the sorrow afterwards
  With my father dead and my mother ran off
  My brothers took the pay of hoods
  The twenties turned the north was dead
  The hunger strike came marching south
  At the garden party not a word was said
  The ladies lifted cake to their mouths
    The next war began and my ship sailed
  With battle orders writ in bed
  In five long years of bullets and shells
  We left tem million dead
  The few returned to old Piccadily
  We limped around Leicster Square
  The world was busy rebuilding itself
  The architects could not care
    But how could we know when I was young
  All the canges that were to come?
  All the photos in the wallets on the battlefield
  And now the terror of the scientific sun
  There was masters an' servants an' servants an' dogs
  They taught you how to touch your cap
  But through strikes an' famine an' war an' peace
  England never closed this gap
    So leave me now the moon is up
  But remember all the tales I tell
  The memories that you have dredged up
  Are on letters forwarded from hell
    The streets were by now deserted
  The gangs had trudged off home
  The lights clicked off in the bedsits
  An' old England was all alone